Review : Red Alert-The War Within

Red Alert-The War Within

Director : Ananth Mahadevan

Writer : Aruna Raje

Music : Lalit Pandit

Cast : Suneil Shetty, Ashish Vidyarthi, Seema Biswas, Ayesha Dharker, Sameera Reddy, Vinod Khanna, Gulshan Grover

What goes for it : A balanced portrayal of a controversial issue, strong performances

What goes against the audience : Casting decisions & a weakly executed climax

Cinemaa Opinion : A film worth clapping for, after a long time. Scroll down for a detailed review.

Flawed, but timely

Political realism is a rarity in Bollywood. Not that we don’t have politically themed films, but almost all of them tend to weigh heavier on the masala factor instead of their realism. The ones that can boast of a fair degree of realism have more of socio-political themes. Thus, hardcore political realism ends up on the losing side. Films like Garam Hawa, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi etc. are events that happen only once in a generation.  That’s sad, since we have a rich heritage of political lore starting even before the days of Christ and continuing with our modern day conflicts like corruption in high places, terrorism, naxalism etc. It becomes all the more sad because the politician is a favourite whipping boy of our escapist cinema. In this light, Ananth Mahadevan’s Red Alert-The War Within is a highly creditable attempt. Though it has its share of flaws and is nowhere in the league of its predecessors named earlier, it does manage to strike quite a few chords.

One of the biggest challenges that a film showcasing a controversial political subject faces is the consistency of perspective. Often, our films are guilty of presenting just one side of the story and usually, it ends up becoming a lopsided perspective. And more often than not, along with a lopsided perspective comes a sense of preachiness. And this is where Red Alert scores high. The film is presented as the POV of Narsimha (Suniel Shetty), a commoner and the film’s protagonist. This allows it to steer clear of any ideological alliance towards either side of the conflict. Narsimha, a displaced labourer who cooks to earn a living, gets involved in the conflict against his wishes and the film traces this journey of his, engaging the viewer with his moral & existential dilemmas.

A point the film makes very effectively is that when both sides have declared a no holds barred war on the other, ideological lines often get blurred and means take precedence over the ends. And what matters more to both sides is winning the war rather than removing the seeds of the conflict. This point is emphasised beautifully in the school shootout sequence. And in the zeal to emerge victorious, neither side shies away from coercing innocent civilians into the conflict. This is amply demonstrated in the way the naxals propound the gun as a solution to all the problems faced by the villagers and the law enforcement authorities go on a rampage while on the hunt. The ruthlessness of the naxal unit commander, Velu (Ashish Vidyarthi) as well as the implied ruthlessness of the top cop, Rathore (Gulshan Grover) raise uncomfortable questions about the direction this war is taking.

Mahadevan is ably aided by his crew. Writer Aruna Raje has scripted out a winner of a tale from a true story thats engaging, moving & thoughtprovoking. A noteworthy effort in a time when remakes and unconvincing tripe is the order of the day. The dialogues have an earthy flavour with strong influences of the local Deccani & Telugu dialects. K.Rajkumar puts up a remarkable show behind the camera with his edgy forest photography and the solemn long shots of the semi-desert that is Telangana. Monty Sharma’s background music is soulful and unobtrusive, adding further to the texture. The best of the lot are the actors, each of them coming up with wonderful performances. The surprises here are Suneil Shetty & Sameera Reddy. Suneil has vastly improved on his irritating accent and is fairly convincing as Narsimha within his limitations. And Sameera, in a de-glammed avatar, packs a powerful punch. Ashish Vidyarthi, Vinod Khanna, Sunil Sinha, Seema Biswas, Ayesha Dharker & Makarand Deshpande perform expectantly well. And Naseeruddin Shah delights in a cameo.

On the flip side, there’s this majot casting issue involving Suneil Shetty. Agreed, he performs exceptionally. But his chiselled physique and bulging biceps are somehow contrary to his character, hence my allusion to his limitations in the previous paragraph. Also, the climax, symbolically proferring a dilution of stands on both ends and a consensus solution to the issue, somehow fails to work. The symbolism doesn’t come out strong enough and it ends up looking like a tacky Bollywoodish climax retrofitted into the film. Another thing that didn’t quite sit well with me is that the police’s side of the story is mostly implied and Gulshan Grover’s character doesn’t get enough screen time to match what the other side gets. Also, the minister, played by Zakir Hussain, is quite a cliched and caricaturish character.  To be fair to the writer & director, this could have been the result of a trade-off in favour of the narrative being the protagonist’s POV. And maintaining an integrity on that front would mean compromising on the screen time for these characters.

These minor flaws apart, Red Alert is a must watch, especially for our jingoistic hysteria fuelled youth. I’ve had many a debate, online as well as offline, about the naxal violence that’s been brewing in recent times. And one disturbing trend I’ve seen across a huge percentage of our youth is the utter disregard for the rights of the innocents, the tribals and villagers, who are unwittingly and unwantonly caught in this battle for power. A watch of the film will give them the much needed perspective. That naxalites/maoists aren’t the only people inhabiting the places they want the army to storm and the air-force to carpet bomb. That there are our compatriots crying out for help, for a solution to their basic needs of food, shelter & livelihood. Take a bow, Ananth, and also the Red Alert team.